


Even Stags Have To Ditch Their Antlers One Day But Make Sure No One Trips Over Them

by imaweirdkid



Series: Careful When You Fall For Someone Cause You Might Break Your Neck [4]
Category: Gintama
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, SHENANIGANS!, they're super married here already even though the wedding is a day away
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-16
Updated: 2020-08-16
Packaged: 2021-03-06 04:28:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25937419
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imaweirdkid/pseuds/imaweirdkid
Summary: The night before one's wedding could be peaceful. It could be exciting. It could be an opportunity for reflection. Not so for Hijikata. His idiot fiancé convinces him to have a stag night. And he stupidly agrees. It only goes downhill from there...
Relationships: Hijikata Toshirou/Sakata Gintoki
Series: Careful When You Fall For Someone Cause You Might Break Your Neck [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1878241
Comments: 4
Kudos: 131





	Even Stags Have To Ditch Their Antlers One Day But Make Sure No One Trips Over Them

**Author's Note:**

> Considering that there is no smut in this fic (sorry!), the amount of tentacles involved is frankly astonishing.

“I don’t understand the concept.” Hijikata says.

Gintoki can’t help but sigh. They’ve been talking about this for the past 10 minutes.

“What’s there to understand? You can take your tax thieves out for a night and Hasegawa and I will attempt to win our weight in money at the Casino.”

“How is this different from any other night?”

“Obviously,” Gintoki says, “it will be the night before the wedding.” And he gives Hijikata a look that he hopes communicates everything there is to say on the subject.

“Are you going to be all love-love aru?” Kagura asks from where she’s sitting on the sofa.

“I don’t think any of their relationship can be described as love-love, Kagura-chan.” Shinpachi says and he even sounds bored.

Oi, those brats! Biting the hand that feeds them! Gin-san can be love-love sometimes! And anyway, he’s trying to keep the love-love away from their impressionable young minds. Which is kind of the crux of his problem right now, because he still has to try and make sure that Hijikata gets where this thing is going. This thing, where Gintoki really really kind of wants them to have a stag night.

And Hijikata isn’t making it any easier.

“Listen to me, perm brain,” Hijikata says, “if you need an excuse to not show up to this wedding, it better not be ‘I lost all my clothes in a game of Mahjong.’ This will not be a repeat episode, dumbass!”

Gintoki is affronted.

“I’ll have you know, Gin-san is a Mahjong master now.”

Hijikata waves him off.

“A few rounds of winning does not a master make.” He sets down the Onigiri he has been making in front of Kagura, Shinpachi, and him. “What are you asking me anyway, if you wanna go gambling, go gambling, you don’t need my permission. Are you going to turn into a dutiful husband all a sudden?”

Hijikata clearly doesn’t understand _at all_ what Gintoki is getting at.

“Nooo, Hijikata-kuuun, you have to go, too. With your tax thieves. Ask the Gorilla or Sofa-kun if they can take you out, show you one last good time before you shackle yourself to Gin-san’s beauty eternally.”

Shinpachi and Kagura have the nerve to snort. The injustice in this house never stops.

Hijikata raises an amused eyebrow. Gintoki takes a bite of the onigiri. It is filled with mayonnaise. Figures.

“Nothing will change when we’re married, asshole.” Hijikata says. He looks at Gintoki questioning and frowns. “You know that, right? Are you getting cold feet?”

“Pfft, nooo!” Gintoki says with a lot more false bravado than is necessary. This conversation is running away from him. “I just think it might be nice. You don’t have to go, obviously. Gin-san isn’t going to force you. I’ll just go with Hasegawa and get drunk.”

And the fact is, he doesn’t. Have cold feet that is. He just sometimes misses when Kagura and Shinpachi and the sadist and the gorilla all had no idea they were together and they had both taken more care to not be found by anyone and so no one had… disturbed them…

And Gintoki isn’t a fan of cheap love hotels, but he does appreciate the part, where they’re undisturbed. That’s a big plus. Gintoki is sold on that alone. And so he thinks maybe, just maybe a stag night would be the perfect excuse to go back to one… like they used to.

“These are separate events. Me and the others and you and the Madao. Or am I missing something?”

Okay, one last try. Here goes his great pitch.

“Well, yes, they are separate.” Gintoki says and saunters over to try and grab Hijikata by the waist, who does not look impressed by his antics at all.

“They look all love-love. Should we leave them alone? I don’t want to see love-love things.” Kagura whispers to Shinpachi. “Not _again_.”

“If they start kissing, we leave,” Shinpachi answers, ever astute.

“Oi, oi,” Hijikata says, “eat your food and stop discussing this like we’re not here.”

Both of them diligently take a bite from their respective Onigiri.

“Maybe,” Gintoki whispers in an attempt to regain the Mayora’s attention, “as the evening progresses, we find ourselves somewhere together on the street. Having inexplicably lost our respective entourages…”

“Told you, it’s love-love things,” Kagura whispers.

“Oi,” Gintoki says. How has it come to this? The kids are cockblocking him days before his own wedding.

“You want to sneak around,” Hijikata interrupts quietly, and Gintoki can see the moment it clicks in Hijikata’s brain, “like we used to.” He gives Gintoki an accusing look. “Have we already lost the spice?”

Shinpachi coughs once very loudly. Gintoki valiantly ignores him.

“Oi, Hijikata-kuuun, it’s just one last time. For old times’ sake, ey?”

And the calculating way in which Hijikata looks at him tells him that he has won.

* * *

Hijikata really isn’t sold on it, but the plan is this. Okita and Kondou take him out drinking, and around 11 pm he makes some excuse to leave. He then meets Yorozuya in front of that burnt out building they used to frequent, when it was still a bar. And the rest of the night is kind of up to them, though he can imagine what Gintoki has in mind and he is certainly not disinclined.

Anyway, it should be simple. Which of course means, that it all goes to shit.

* * *

First off, Kondou-san goes completely overboard with the idea. He takes them to Otae’s bar — which Hijikata really should have seen coming from a mile away — and it all ends with Kondou buying way too much Dom Peri, getting positively shit-faced, and stalking the girl all night. But not before laying some truths on Hijikata that Hijikata really could have lived without.

“I’m so happy for you, Toushi, I am,” Kondou says, his whole body weight leaning into his side, “but I also feel for you. To never again feel a woman’s soft bosom. I don’t know if I could do it.”

“I’m sure I’ll live.” Hijikata says, dryly.

Kondou-san is so drunk that Hijikata worries briefly if he is going to make it to the wedding tomorrow. He just hopes Sougo will stay with him and get him back to the barracks in time after Hijikata makes his exit…

Suddenly Kondou sits up straight. He looks vaguely like a deer that just heard a sound. Then he brings their heads together in a conspiratory manner and whispers, “That’s right, Toushi, you’ve gone there. You’ll know. Tell me,” he looks at Hijikata as if he expects to hear the answers to life’s great questions, “how is it with a man?”

“What?!” Hijikata asks and backs off so fast he almost bumps into Okita, who is sitting on his other side and just grins at him, the sadistic devil. Honestly, this is too much.

“I need to take a piss.” He says and extracts himself from between Kondou and Okita.

He makes his way through the crowd to the restrooms.

What the hell is this evening. Gintoki better make it up to him later.

He is getting married tomorrow and instead of enjoying what may well be the last quiet night of his life — considering the nonsense Yorozuya usually gets up to — he is in a room full of drunk and horny men, money-hungry women, and a frankly perverse amount of Dom Peri.

When he gets to the restroom, he is the only one in, which is surprising seeing as the bar is fairly crowded, but the respite is not unwelcome. He goes to one of the urinals and just as he’s about to open his trousers, he hears some very strange knocking coming from behind him in one of the stalls.

“Huh?” Hijikata turns towards the origin of the noise.

He has a choice here. He can ignore the noise and continue with his evening. Or he can check what it is. His instincts as the Vice-Commander of the Shinsengumi win out and he goes to investigate.

“Hello?” he tries but gets no answer. Then he gets three knocks and a grunt.

Maybe he should leave this well enough alone.

But instead he grabs the handle of the stall door and hopes that he won’t get an eye-full of some dude going number 2.

He doesn’t. No, what he sees is a tied up Hasegawa in his underwear with a pair of socks stuffed in his mouth, knocking the tip of his shoe against the side of the stall.

“What the—?” Hijikata says and then… “Wait a minute, aren’t you with Gintoki?!”

* * *

He unties the Madao who thanks him endlessly rather than giving him any relevant information.

“Listen to me, you useless bastard,” he says, when he finally tucks the last robe free, “You’re going to tell me where the hell the even more useless Yorozuya is.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” the Madao says.

“I don’t care whose fault it was,” mainly because he can imagine that it was Gintoki’s, “I just need you to tell me where he is.”

“I didn’t even want to go in there!”

“Go in _where_?”

“Well… There is this new Pachinko parlour.” Hasegawa says finally. “Only it looks really shady.”

“Where is this place?”

“It’s run by this Amanto…”

“I asked you where it is, not who runs it!”

“My, my, Hijikata-san, what will Danna say when he finds out you go into public restrooms with his best friend and some bondage gear?” Okita says from where he is standing in the door to his right.

Just what he needs. A meddling sadist.

“Probably nothing, seeing as he was meant to be with this Madao right now. Which brings us back to the question of the evening” He turns back to Hasegawa, “Where is the stupid perm?”

“I don’t know!” Hasegawa says, “They separated us!”

Hijikata is fast approaching his patience limit.

“Who is they?!”

“Well, it all started with Gintoki’s winning streak…”

* * *

If he’s honest, he had kind of envisioned the evening slightly differently. Gintoki can admit when things don’t quite go according to his plan. He can be the bigger person. And he has to concede that yes, being fed to an enormous tentacle monster 12 hours before he is meant to marry Hijikata isn’t what he had in mind originally. He may be kinky, but there really is a limit.

He really had planned to go to the Casino with Hasegawa. But then they had walked past this new Pachinko place and honestly gambling is gambling at the end of the day, isn’t it? So he suggested that they try their luck there first and Gintoki had sat down and played a bit and won frankly an absurd amount of balls in record time, so he was feeling pretty good about it. In his mind, he was already calculating what kind of gift he may be able to bring Hijikata back as proof of his success. He wondered what kinds of prize this parlour might offer to its lucky winners, when suddenly him and Hasegawa were taken by their scruffs and hauled towards the backroom by two massive Amanto.

They had taken Hasegawa somewhere — who knows where — probably to be fed to the monster before Gintoki could try his best to slay it.

Because… as it turns out, the Pachinko place is actually just a front for an illegal Amanto fighting ring. It is meant to be impossible to win at the machines unless you are Amanto, apparently. Then you would go to the back and you would trade your winnings for a ticket to enjoy some good old fashioned tentacle fighting — not a euphemism.

But Gintoki had won and won and won and so they decided that instead of offering him some entertainment for the evening by watching the tentacle monster take apart some humans, that he was to _be_ the entertainment for the evening by being taken apart by the tentacle monster. Just his luck.

Maybe they thought he was cheating.

In any case, at this moment Gintoki is watching another poor sod trying to best the beast, but failing miserably, and he has just been told that he’ll be the next one up, so the evening is about to get a lot more interesting than he signed up for. Maybe they should have just stayed home after all.

He could have sent Kagura to Shinpachi’s for the night. Really all this excitement is overrated. If he had just been satisfied, there could be things other than death by tentacle monster happening right now to get his blood boiling. He sincerely hopes Hijikata is having a better evening at least.

To make matters worse this reminds him that Hijikata is going to be absolutely livid, when Gintoki inevitably shows up late to their wedding, covered in tentacle monster goo.

* * *

When Hijikata, Okita, and the Madao get to the Pachinko parlour, the place is closed, because of course it is.

“You’re sure it’s this place?” he asks the Madao.

“Yes, I am absolutely certain,” he assures him, “I remember these nice young ladies.”

The sign on the shop next to the parlour features two girls in bathing suits with massive breasts, cat ears, and a few tentacles in the background that are coming from who knows where.

Hijikata sighs. He’s glad now that they left Kondou-san at the bar with four members of the Shinsengumi to look after him. In his state, this would have been right up his alley.

“No worries, Hijikata-san,” Okita says behind him, pointing a bazooka at the front entrance and — incidentally in the process — at Hijikata.

“Can you go two minutes without trying to kill me, you bastard?”

“Sorry, Hijikata-san,” Okita says, sounding utterly unapologetic, “I’m afraid there’s no other way in.” And he shoots the bazooka.

Hijikata throws himself out of the way with trained ease. Which is to say he is getting altogether too much practice at this kind of thing.

The Madao is staring at the hole in the front of the parlour and mumbles something suspiciously close to “police brutality” until he sees Hijikata’s murderous expression and consequently — wisely — shuts up.

The bazooka destroyed some Pachinko machines near the entrance, so in the middle of all the smoke and chaos from the impact, there are Pachinko balls strewn everywhere, which honestly seems like a metaphor for the life Hijikata is about to marry into.

There is no one in the front of the place and for some unfathomable reason, no one seems to have heard them explode the entrance. Which already does not bode well.

Because this can only mean there is something louder happening elsewhere.

Hasegawa points towards the back.

“That’s where they took us. I don’t know if we should just go in though, there were some strange sounds coming from there. You just can’t hear it over the Pachinko machines usually.”

He is right, too. A strange grumbling noise can be heard from the back.

“Okita,” Hijikata says, “call back-up. I think well’ll have our hands full here soon.”

“Oi, Hijikata-kun, you are so high maintenance with your lovers getting themselves kidnapped left, right, and center.” the little shit says.

“Stop bitching, start doing,” he answers, “and when you’re done, you can commit seppuku for that disrespect.”

Okita rolls his eyes and starts dialling.

Hijikata points Hasegawa towards the back.

“Show me, where they took you.”

When they get to a heavy grey door, the grumbling sounds more like a roaring and Hijikata has decided that his idiot almost-husband is going to be in for some hell of a beating when they get out of this situation.

“M-Maybe we should wait for back-up?” Hasegawa tries, but Hijikata just gives him a look.

He tries to open the door and to his surprise it is unlocked. It’s as heavy as it looks, though. And he thinks he’d rather keep it open with something but unless he wants to destroy another Pachinko machine back here and move it to keep the door open he’ll just have to take his chances.

When the door closes heavily behind them, Hasegawa and him find themselves in a dull, grey hallway. It looks so dull and grey in fact, you could almost think someone ran out of ideas when writing this bit.

So instead of dawdling, they just keep moving forward, down a set of stairs they find at the end of the hallway and onwards. He has to keep arguing with the Madao, who seems determined to delay as much as possible in the hopes that the rest of the Shinsengumi get here.

They get to the end of the next hallway and are greeted by three doors in three different colours, red, green, and blue.

“Well?” He asks Hasegawa.

“How should I know? They didn’t take me down here!” He answers. Which is a fair point, but still.

Useless Madao…

“Fine. You take the blue, I’ll take the green. And whoever is back first tries the red.”

“Shouldn’t we maybe wai—“

“Move.” Hijikata says.

To his credit, he does. And so does Hijikata.

When he opens the green door, an ominous rumble goes through the building.

* * *

So maybe Gintoki made a slight strategic mistake in that he let himself be picked up by the monster. The two Amanto who threw him in the cage with Tentacles — as he has decided to call the monster — were kind enough to let him keep his bokuto, so that’s nice.

The cage is kind of a bit too cosy for his liking and Tentacles is the proud owner of ten — well, as his nickname suggests — tentacles and it is showing them all off rather aggressively. Gintoki thinks, he should probably try and aim for its eye of which it only has one. And if he’s just quick enough, he can probably avoid getting caught by one of the tentacles. With one eye surely this thing’s depth perception is shot, right? So he should have that going in his favour.

As soon as he thinks that, one of the tentacles hits him in the face and when he falls into the side of the cage, it wraps tightly around his middle and hoists him up in air.

Which is where he is now.

In the air.

He really should have stayed home.

* * *

The picture Hijikata is greeted with is an arena full of Amanto, a massive cage in the middle, a slightly less massive tentacle monster, and Gintoki several feet mid-air trying to hit the thing with his bokuto. What really makes his blood boil is the fact that the idiot is beating the tentacle that’s holding him up. What the actual fuck.

Hasegawa appears right next to him, because apparently all three doors lead to the same place. He looks a bit ill when he sees the monster.

“Oh boy,” he says.

“We need to get into that cage,” Hijikata hisses.

“Wh-What?!”

“You heard me. Make yourself useful. I’ll go right, you’ll go left. We need to find a way in.”

The Madao nods and marches towards the left side of the arena. Hijikata goes right, trying to find any indication that there is an entrance in this direction.

When he sees a familiar face among the Amanto, at first he can’t believe it. The stupid fucking bartender that betrayed them ages ago. He knew he shouldn’t have let the man go.

“Oi, you,” he says and taps him on the shoulder. It would have been pretty useful if Hijikata had ever actively listened to this guy’s name. As it happens, he hadn’t. So he can’t for the life of him remember it now.

“Hm?” the Amanto turns around and blanches, “V-V-Vice-Commander?!”

“Shhh,” Hijikata says, “Look, I won’t ask why the hell you are involved in yet another illegal activity — especially seeing as it involves humans that are being ripped apart for sport — but only if you tell me how I can get into that cage.”

If anything the Amanto pales even more.

“Y-You want to go _in_?” he asks.

And just as he says that, Hijikata can see Gintoki getting one hell of a rollercoaster ride, courtesy of the tentacle monster.

“Are you blind? That’s Yorozuya in there! Yes, I need to go in!” Hijikata hisses.

“Oh,” the Amanto — Kilian, his brain finally supplies — says and turns back to look at the cage, “Oh, yeah, I thought he looked familiar…”

Hijikata really needs this guy to start being helpful or he is going to kill him. He can feel his control slipping already.

“So,” he tries to get Kilian’s attention, “how do I get in?”

“Hm,” he says and Hijikata’s gives him exactly 3 seconds, 2, 1— “I think the quarters for the prisoners are by the toilets. S-Sometimes you can hear them crying in between fights. So the entrance must be around there, I reckon.” He points at a door towards Hijikata’s right.

“Thank you,” Hijikata bites out. “Oh, and I think it goes without saying that this better be your last visit here.”

Kilian nods fervently. “Of course, of course!”

He really hopes the rest of the Shinsengumi will pick this bastard off the street when they get here.

* * *

When Hijikata gets past the door he finds the toilets to one side and a small corridor to his left. It leads downwards, so chances are Kilian is right and the entrance to the cage is at the end.

He doesn’t have any time to lose and starts running down the corridor.

The rumbling and roaring makes the foundation of the building shake. How the hell is anyone even holding this thing as a pet in the middle of the Kabukicho?! The reports he is going to have to fill out when this is all over make his head hurt already.

Finally, he sees the cage entrance. There are two Amanto standing right in front watching how Gintoki gets slapped around by the monster. They’re probably supposed to make sure that none of the prisoners flee the cage because the entrance is merely made up of massive metal bars and they’re far enough apart that humans can fit right through.

Which means he either has to waste time fighting with the Amanto or…

He starts sneaking closer. The monster is so loud that there is no way the two will hear Hijikata until he is close enough that he can just quickly start running through the bars and into the cage.

Which is exactly what he does.

He only hears a faint “Hey!” from behind him as he runs past them and suddenly he finds himself face-to-face with a tentacle monster.

* * *

“Toushirou?!” Gintoki yells from where he is being held by one of the tentacles. “What are you doing here?!”

He’s being whisked up and down by it and Hijikata has to right away try his best to dodge the other tentacles as well as Gintoki, whom the monster has decided to use as a hammer apparently.

“Wait,” Gintoki yells, after he’s been whisked upwards and downwards and is once again within earshot of Hijikata. “Did you come here to play Pachinko as well?”

“What,” Hijikata says as he jumps up with his sword at the ready, “does it look like, you idiot?” He comes down and cuts the tentacle that is holding Gintoki clean off the monster, which cries out and lets out an enormous angry roar.

Gintoki falls a few feet to the ground, but seems mostly unharmed. He grabs his bokuto which conveniently landed a couple of feet next to him. Hijikata and Gintoki are now in what can only be described as Tentacle Plaza. Because the monster seems to be so enraged by having lost one tentacle that it simply beats the rest around in the world’s strangest merry-go-round.

“We haven’t fought like this in a while.” Gintoki says, batting a tentacle away to his right.

“I honestly could have held out a little longer without the privilege.” Hijikata answers as he cuts some suction cups off another one of the tentacles. “If this is your idea of a wedding gift,” — another cut — “I’d rather you consult Glasses again on all future presents.”

“Tss, tss,” the bastard says and beats yet another tentacle away with his bokuto. “You are such a high maintenance bride.”

“I’ll show you a high maintenance bride, asshole!”

And both Hijikata and Gintoki jump up in unison and push their respective weapons into the creature’s eye socket.

The monster cries out so loudly that Hijikata thinks this is it for his hearing. He’ll definitely have a tinnitus for his wedding day.

For about five seconds, the monster slaps its remaining tentacles around like there’s no tomorrow and then it sacks together into a big pile of Dead Tentacle Monster. Hijikata and Gintoki are hanging by their respective weapons in front of the creature’s eye socket, several feet between them and the ground beneath.

Gintoki, the fucker, has the audacity to grin at him.

“Didn’t I tell you, it’d be just like old times?” He says.

“I believe, your exact words were ‘For old times’ sake.’ And I wish I could say that this kind of shit doesn’t induce any nostalgia.”

“Oi, oi, Gin-san only has good ideas. What’s a little fighting to get the blood pumping, ey?” And he wiggles his eyebrows suggestively.

Hijikata must look at him as incredulously as he feels because he can see Gintoki’s bravado fainting with every silent second they’re hanging here.

“How the hell can you be thinking about sex right now, you fucking pervert?!”

“I mean, it does sound an awful lot like a hentai premise if you think about it,” the bastard says, and Hijikata tries to kick him from where he is hanging.

He misses.

Gintoki still drops down and falls flat on his face — finally, some justice — and Hijikata drops down as well, whilst thankfully managing to stay upright. How they’re going to get their weapons down is anybody’s guess. He’ll make Yamazaki climb for them if all else fails.

“You better not have broken your nose, idiot. You need to look half respectable tomorrow.”

“I always look respectable,” he says and is rubbing his nose, looking anything but respectable. It doesn’t look like it’s bleeding, though, so that’s something.

When he looks around, he can see that the Shinsengumi back-up has arrived and is keeping the “audience” under tight guard. Another weight off Hijikata’s mind. The only thing is that their evening is officially ruined. He’ll have to secure the perimeter and oversee the arrests, because there is no way Kondou-san is in any state to do it for him.

As he looks over to Gintoki, who is also looking around, he can tell that the idiot has already realised this.

“So,” Gintoki starts and scratches the back of his neck, “I guess I ruined our evening a bit.”

In that moment a bit of bright neon tentacle monster blood drops down onto Gintoki’s shoulder.

And Hijikata can’t help himself. He has to laugh. The evening has been too ridiculous. And once he starts he finds he can’t stop. What with seeing that idiotic expression on Yorozuya’s face right now. He can’t take it.

Yorozuya is looking first surprised, then disgusted, then resigned. At some point his face settles on a frown until he meets Hijikata’s eyes. Then his face also splits into a grin and finally there is wholehearted laughter from both of them.

Hijikata lets himself fall onto the sandy ground of the cage, laughing all the way. He’s utterly exhausted and this disaster of a person covered in goo in front of him is just the best thing he has ever seen.

For every stupid thing Gintoki has ever done, him sitting in a cage covered in tentacle monster blood will still get a special place in Hijikata’s memory. And just looking at him, Hijikata starts laughing again. And Gintoki joins back in.

* * *

When they have both calmed down some a few moments later, Gintoki crawls up to him in all his goo covered glory and leans in close, the bastard.

“Yorozuya,” Hijikata warns quietly, “if you kiss me now in front of all these people, I will literally cut off your dick.”

“Well, that’s clearly just as much of a loss to you as it is to me.” he says and brings their lips together. Hijikata lets it happen for a bit. But only because he’s feeling generous. Then he elbows Gintoki in the ribs.

“C’mon then, asshat,” Hijikata says, “you can wait outside, while I deal with your mess.”

“Isn’t it what’s mine is yours from now on?” Gintoki says innocently and Hijikata elbows him again for good measure.

* * *

“Oi, Gintoki,” Hasegawa says outside, as he’s coming up next to him, “your future husband is scary.”

Gintoki looks over to where Hijikata is shouting down four Shinsengumi members, who were apparently supposed to look after the Gorilla for the evening and had lost sight of him.

“He is, isn’t he,” Gintoki agrees and smiles.

* * *

“Why did that machine even spew balls at you if only Amanto were meant to win?” Hijikata asks when they’re finally back at Gintoki’s hours later. They have to be a bit quiet, China is likely very much asleep by now.

“Oh,” Gintoki says and turns the colour of crimson which rarely ever happens. The bastard usually has absolutely no shame in regards to anything. “Well, Gin-san wanted to be special for Hijikata tonight and… well…”

“What did you do?”

“There was this Amanto on the street who sold this kind of perfume that was meant to be a subtle aphrodisiac…”

Hijikata is staring at him. He has got to be kidding.

“You bought some random substance off the street?!”

“Well, it seemed perfectly legal. And it is! I think… And it didn’t smell too bad. Gin-san wanted to smell especially inviting! How could I have known that it was an Amanto body spray?”

“It was an Amanto who sold it to you!”

“Well, yes…” he allows, “anyway, apparently the Pachinko machine takes air samples from around the player and so thought…”

“…that you were an Amanto. I see.”

Gintoki grumbles in agreement, staring at the floor.

He looks tired and a bit defeated actually and Hijikata can’t help but take pity on him a bit.

“Right,” he says and starts putting his shoes back on, “C’mon then.”

Gintoki looks up.

“Are we going somewhere?”

“I believe, you promised me a night at a crappy love hotel.” Hijikata says, “And I am suddenly finding myself unable to resist that shitty Amanto crap you’ve covered yourself in.”

Gintoki stares and then grins. It still makes Hijikata’s insides feel uncomfortably warm. Ugh, the idiot has turned him into such a sentimental bastard. He gives himself a break, though, on account of tomorrow being his wedding. If there ever was a time for sentimentality, it was probably now.

“Well, I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist my main character charms!”

Hijikata snorts and slides the door open. He pauses.

“Oi, Gintoki?”

“Hm?”

“Leave the gooey yukata.”

* * *

When they step outside into the warm spring night, Hijikata has the strong feeling that tomorrow is gonna be a nice day.

* * *

**Epilogue**

Gintoki always feels a bit stupid when he does this — and he thanks all deities that Hijikata has yet to catch him at it — but he likes to watch Hijikata sleep. Just a bit. Not in a creepy way. Just… The bastard is usually so stressed during the day and obviously Gintoki is a bit turned on when he unleashes his whole Demon Vice-Commander spiel, so he watches him when he’s awake for entirely different reasons…

But when he’s asleep, he looks utterly relaxed. His face just looks incredibly young and carefree and the really stupid side of Gintoki — the one that never ever sees the light of day — he likes it when Hijikata looks carefree, not stressed, relaxed. Safe, his brain supplies, and he pushes the thought away, because it’s completely uncalled for.

So what if Gintoki likes to watch Hijikata sleep sometimes? It happens. Tonight, or rather this morning by now, seems particularly special because they’re getting married in a few hours and here is Hijikata in a really awful love hotel sleeping soundly next to him after they both fought off a massive tentacle monster together and then had rather life-affirming sex. And this thing he’s feeling is just something that Gintoki can’t put into words.

It feels warm and deeply satisfying — and not just because he’s sated right now. It feels like more than a really nice parfait. Rather like the way cheap alcohol burns its way down into the body and spreads warmth. And so, despite the fact that Hijikata is an utter controlling bastard with terrible taste in condiments and a nasty smoking habit… Gintoki has tried his best over the last few years not to blow this.

And despite his awful luck at Pachinko, he thinks maybe Mistress Luck is a fan of him after all. He gets to have this.

He lets his hand run through Hijikata’s hair and to his immense surprise, the bastard opens his eyes.

“Are you watching me sleep, asshole?” He mumbles, his voice rough from sleep.

“Pfft, no!” Gintoki says.

Hijikata smiles. Who knows what that means.

“You getting cold feet after all?” He asks.

“Nah,” Gintoki says, “we’ve come this far, might as well get it over with.”

“Hm,” Hijikata agrees and plants his face on Gintoki’s chest like he always does when he’s trying to get comfortable.

“Oi, Mayora,” Gintoki says.

“Hm?” Hijikata grumbles without looking up.

“I will try to be a good husband to you.” He says, because he feels like it would be good to at least put his intention out there. He will likely fuck up along the way, but maybe it counts that he’s trying?

Hijikata looks up and frowns.

They stare at each other for a moment.

Then Hijikata comes up to his eye level.

“Idiot,” he says, seriously, and keeps staring at Gintoki, “it was a pre-diabetic asshole I asked for and I won’t take anything less.” Then his hand comes up to grab Gintoki’s head and he presses their mouths together.

And Gintoki finds that maybe, he actually isn’t quite sated for the night.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! :)


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